What’s in a name?

According to my parents, a lot.

After a painfully long twenty-seven-and-a-half hours of labour, I was finally introduced to the world on July 30th, 1998.

My mother was exhausted. She told the doctors she wouldn’t have the energy to hold me until after she caught up on sleep, so I was passed off to my father and shown around town.

The first question anyone had for him was, “What’s the baby’s name?”

“Taylor” my father confidently replied.

There was one problem with this: my parents hadn’t come to a consensus on my name. Taylor had been my father’s first choice and my mother’s third. So when she heard the news, she was pissed.

Since it was too late to change it, my father’s executive decision on my first and last name stuck. My mother, however, fuelled by egalitarianism and spite, decided I was getting not one, but two middle names: Alyssa and Jade.

My middle names have stuck with me, as a reminder of the indignant power held by the matriarchs of my family. Naming this website in their honour is a reminder that everything I am able to do is because of the indignant power they passed onto me.